Steve McCurry: "The tragedy is that the pandemic will teach us nothing"

• Interview in 2016. Steve McCurry: "The negative is the score and the impression, the interpretation"

"Beauty and the environment are a priority for a few," says Steve McCurry, the world's best-known photographer, from his studio in Philadelphia.

"

and transforming the entire planet into a large shopping center surrounded by parking lots: 'Let's open the national parks, let's extract the oil!'

For them, the adjective uncontaminated only suggests radical, extravagant ideas.

Regret

Most of my compatriots are unquestionably uninformed.

They do not wonder if our health system or our school system are the best possible.

They don't question our foreign policy, which is a disaster.

Who are we friends with?

From Europe? "" President Trump, "he continues," tells lies all the time, uses violent language, even boasts that he can kill.

You can also steal or keep lying and there will be no limits, sure that your sympathizers will support you 100%.

.

Yes, people have been overwhelmed, their daily lives have been abruptly interrupted, and pollution has been reduced.

But when it's over, if it's over, people will be in a hurry to get back to their habits, their jobs, and their favorite team.

And it will be until half of Florida or the Netherlands are under water and governments have to take more drastic measures. "

I have turned this surreal period of forced confinement into a blessing from heaven.

Of course I canceled many projects but that way I could dedicate myself to my archives, to my family, to my friends. ”Born in 1950, McCurry achieved notoriety as a war photographer before he was 30 years old.

His were the photographs on the cover of

in December 1979 they witnessed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

During his career he infiltrated the Mujahideen dressed in Pashtun, was arrested in Pakistan and Burma, robbed and machine-gunned in Afghanistan, and walked over a minefield,

During the first Gulf War, McCurry felt the rush of adrenaline rushing to the battlefield, wherever he went.

.

But in the end, he always chose beauty.

The beauty of nature and cultures, in danger of extinction in the era of globalization.

Passing on the traditions, the details and the splendor that is about to disappear became a personal mission.

For nearly 50 years, McCurry has traveled the world alone nine months out of the year.

He's been to India alone 100 times. Steve McCurry doesn't wait for inspiration: he has perseverance, innate taste, manic precision, and an upbringing that he, the product of a dysfunctional childhood, despised for years.

Afterwards, he returned to the classroom, studied film with the best grades and ended up in photojournalism, a genre in supposed decline in which his name sounds like that of a planetary pop star.

His images are recognizable around the world, perfect,

.

His résumé includes four World Presses, the Robert Capa gold medal and, most recently, the Centennial medal from the Royal Photographic Society of London.The portrait of Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed Afghan girl who appeared on the cover of

in June 1986 was the great milestone of his legend.

“A few years ago,” McCurry says, “the Pakistani government used it as a symbol.

I wanted to express

which may be the law with people that the state wants to get rid of, such as refugees.

That message from:

.

It was what happened to that woman, an orphan and refugee for 30 years, poor and sick, who did not know how to read or write, did not know then what a lawyer is, who has lost a daughter and became a widow.

I keep in touch with her, but it's difficult.

At the time it was an international scandal for Pakistan.

Now he lives in Kabul and

It has given him a place to stay and some money. ”On September 11, 2001, returning from Tibet, where McCurry met the Dalai Lama, the war found him at home.

The attack on the Twin Towers took him by surprise in the Village studio.

McCurry only published those photographs 10 years later, when emotion had left room for reflection. Before, in 2002, when the United States was pursuing those responsible for the Manhattan attacks, McCurry returned to look for Sharbat Gula where he had left her 17 years before.

He found her and, grateful for the twist that emerald gaze gave his career,

.

“The problem is that she is a woman and she is also illiterate.

I am convinced that they threw her out of that house without any compensation ”, says the photographer. Now McCurry publishes a book with unpublished photographs, rescued during confinement,

(Blume).

The selection includes

that give clues to the photographer's strategy.

McCurry is a tenacious man, skilled at gaining the trust of the people he photographs but

Right, the product of a poorly treated childhood accident that, in part, turned in his favor: “It basically made me avoid Vietnam.” “If the pandemic allows it, I hope to go to the Galapagos in November,” says McCurry.

Now he no longer travels alone.

In 2017, at the age of 67, the photographer became a father.

«

and it has already been in 30 countries: Italy, Holland, China, Russia, India, Ecuador, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore even in the Arctic ».

The mother, Andie Belone, is a Native American from the Hopi tribe, founder of the Walpi Village, in Navajo County, northern Arizona.

«For Lucia I would like a bright future.

I would like an excellent education, that you travel, learn languages ​​and embrace the world as if it were your home.

And I would love if you could bring a little passion to make it a better place.

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